The Price of Liberty

[Music] it has been said that democracy is among the weakest systems ever conceived by man now national conservatives and many socialists will tend to use this as an argument against liberal democracy citing the supposed strength by comparison of their preferred systems and conversely to this there seems to be a tendency among today's liberals to outright refute this claim and instead argue whether implicitly or explicitly that liberal democracy is an inherently strong system of government i would argue however that the opponents of liberal democracy are correct in a sense democracy in its many forms is an inherently very weak system the division of power to such an extent makes it theoretically very easy for would-be autocrats to undermine and exploit this goes doubly for presidential republics such as the united states because the mere existence of such a powerful office as the president while quite useful often lends itself to authoritarianism and yet i am not arguing that democracy is a bad system on the contrary i consider it to be the greatest system thus far created by which to order a society when applied correctly a liberal democracy can be both a firm system of governance able to stand amidst diversity and a flexible system of governments able to adapt to any new circumstances that present themselves this was perhaps best demonstrated when the democratic allied powers faced off against the autocratic and fascist axis powers early on in the war the axis powers made rapid gains and quickly overpowered western europe under threat of invasion it appeared the british government and people might fold to nazi pressure but when they were truly pushed in the battle of britain the british people united around their ideals of liberty and democracy to throw back the oncoming tide of fascism prolific writers and speakers such as george orwell took up the cause of encouraging brits to see the war through writing in 1942 that pacifism is objectively pro-fascist this is elementary common sense if you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other nor is there any real way remaining outside such a war as the present one in practice he that is not with me is against me in a time of crisis an entrenched democracy unites its people in the face of the greatest adversity meanwhile in germany the exact opposite could be seen taking place as germany's early war momentum faded and the war became increasingly difficult german high command turned to the use of fear and tyranny to maintain control of the people as the war progressed and it became more and more obvious that it was unwinnable for germany nazi high command turned on itself and imploded and the reich that was meant to last 1 000 years barely lasted for 12. democracies also generally yield greater competence and organization in military structure as an inevitable result of the inherent nature of a democratic society the efficiency of the american military is due among other things to the tendency of a free society to encourage citizens to think for themselves and soldiers regardless of the military hierarchy thereby have a far greater ability to easily adapt to extraneous circumstances on top of this a meritocratic system of promotion that is core to liberal democracy ensures that the most talented and qualified are able to rise through the ranks in accordance with their skill for example during operation desert storm coalition forces led by america fought with great effectiveness against the often well-equipped and outnumbering iraqi forces and quite often a low-level officer in the coalition could display as much or even more effectiveness than an iraqi general by comparison the iraqi army was kept divided between competing generals who fought over prestige and influence this was to an extent an intentional decision by saddam hussein to ensure that no unified domestic opposition against him could arise iraqi generals would often withhold information critical to military success from lower ranking officers so as to one up their rivals as a result the gulf war was a resounding defeat for iraq and a perfect practical demonstration of the effectiveness of a democracy as opposed to a dictatorship lastly but perhaps most importantly a functioning democracy provides a high degree of stability and consistency in governance as we're seeing right now in the united states even the weakest and most incompetent leader is at the end of the day temporary a brief mistake in the long run democracies rarely produce the great and inspirational leaders sometimes seen in autocracies but at the same time rarely do they yield truly horrible leaders democracy therefore provides redundancy if a leader or government is failing they can simply be replaced come the next election now contrast this with an autocratic state like the russian empire for all its majesty the average tsar was far more akin to nicholas ii than catherine the great for every augustus you get five caligulas for every frederick the great you get five wilhelm the seconds a weak leader in autocracy often means years of strife oppression and bloody civil war to follow just take a look at the crisis of the 3rd century in the roman empire or the russian february and october revolutions meanwhile the stability provided by a democracy allows her citizens and subsequently society to grow and flourish relatively unimpeded however no democracy is stronger than the will of its citizens to maintain it and engage in it when the people stop caring to preserve democracy its collapse is all but inevitable this is the issue faced by every young democracy and that is the reason why so many of them fall thus was the case in weimar germany whose iron front fought manically against the forces of both fascism and communism to maintain the fledgling german republic unfortunately despite their vehement efforts the german people did not wish to maintain the system they were exhausted from first day generation destroying war and then two crippling economic crises and so ultimately they voted the nazi party into power ending the democratic experiment in germany and bringing about what is considered by many to be the most brutal regime in modern history the opposite problem is faced in old democracies such as the united states britain and france rather than a lack of democratic entrenchment countries like these face the problem of overconfidence that is to say the belief that the democratic system has always and will always be in place the republican virtues upon which a country like america was founded become taken for granted and forgotten and so increasingly authoritarian and anti-democratic measures become acceptable therefore it is the duty of the people of a nation to uphold those republican values because those values are the foundation of democracy and the popular adherence to them is the only thing holding it together as gordon s wood writes in the radicalism of the american revolution monarchies could tolerate great deals of self-interestedness private gratification and corruption among their subjects after all they were based on dependence and subservience and had all sorts of adhesives and connections besides virtue to hold their societies together monarchies relied on blood family kinship patronage and ultimately fear but republics could never resort to such force in their purest form they had no adhesives no bonds holding themselves together except their citizens voluntary patriotism and willingness to obey public authority without virtue and self-sacrifice republics would fall apart a republic is quite similar to a diamond when applied correctly and properly maintained it is practically indestructible however when its integrity is degraded and when it's struck at just the right angle it can be shattered with little effort democracy is fragile a tiny flame caught in a thunderstorm it must be sheltered and protected by the people so that it may continue to flourish grow into a mighty bonfire in his first inaugural address george washington said that the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered as deeply perhaps as finely staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the american people [Music] thank you for watching i'd like to apologize for how long this relatively short video took to create school is hell and i've had trouble finding any time to work on videos indeed this video would not have been possible without my friend galad of the irish liberal association who helped me write well over half of the script i'd also like to commend my friend logicus who contributed the voice lines for the quote from orwell he runs a small youtube channel which i would highly recommend and which will be linked in the description down below along with it you will find links to my twitter and my discord server along with a list of sources used in the video i would also appreciate if you left a comment shared the video around and subscribed having said all of that till next time you

Channel: Arken the Amerikan

Views: 4,515

Rating: 4.8699999 out of 5

Keywords: #Democracy, #Liberty, #2020Election

Id: gpbKseLs1bk

Length: 9min 54sec (594 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 05 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/kwanijml]

The greatest system thus far to order society is individual property rights and markets. Not democracy, as the author of this video states.

Democracy (with some serious checks on it at that) is simply one of the best ways to administrate a commons, when that commons is unavoidable due to transaction costs prohibiting the use of individual property rights.

I'm appalled at the number of people here who seem to hold the same pseudo-religious views about social contract and the sanctity of government, as do the blunt-thinking progressives...if only to a slightly lesser extent.

Commons (and the legitimized monopolies required to administrate them; whether democratically or autocratically) may be necessary evils...but they are evils nonetheless. Not just from my moral point of view, but from even a consequentialist perspective, assuming you don't deny psychological egoism and methodological individualism (i.e. there is no hivemind; there is no concept of value or good outside the experience of the individual; there's no societal good other than what's the most good for the greatest number of individuals, as revealed by their choices first and foremost, and then by their expressed preferences, where transaction costs make preferences to expensive to reveal through market action).

Democracy is not "good", anymore than violently throwing your child aside is "good"...you may have done it to pull them out of the way of a speeding car, and so that was good to save their life, but if there were a less violent way to accomplish the saving of their life or preventing the situation to start with...any decent person would want to do that.

Empirically speaking, democracy seem to produce less corruption than more autocratic forms of government, certainly, and it tends to shield from the excesses of an unwise or unscrupulous autocrat...but it also stifles societies in middle-of-the-road policies; which means that there's little chance of getting really technocratically "good" economic and foreign/trade policy. We also observe that democracy doesn't seem to be the most dominant factor in the quality of governance...noting that most anyone would choose to live in a party-run Singapore or the principality of Liechtenstein, than a democratically run Botswana or Philippines.

Clearly, modernity and wealth and education and culture play a bigger role in shaping the scruples of autocrats than people imagine, and political decentralization would produce more beneficial impact for most struggling nations with internal strife, than would more ignorant peasants voting their hatred and vitriol for the other team.

Even dictatorships and monarchies have a selectorate....the selectorate is just larger in a democracy (still isn't usually "the people" at large in practice, but would be in the ideal). This spreads public goods wider, but at the cost of ossification, bureaucratic inefficiency, not to mentioned rational ignorance among the voters, irrationalities and paradoxes and impossibilities inherent to all kinds of run-off systems including fptp, ranked-choice, approval etc.

Democracy is a damned steaming pile of shit, which is just less shitty than a lot of other shit which people keep naval-gazing at because they don't even consider or try for trying to avoid commons in the first place, or politically decentralize, or use contract law, etc.

Everyone has their pet list of things that they believe are the sacred domain of government (as long as its democratic! Right?), and they pretend to themselves like its anything other than a belief...pretend they've done some utilitarian calculus and found that their arbitrary set of things we "must" leave to shittt democratic decision making, will not produce more governance failure and political externality, than the market failures and externalities which they believe we're being saved from.

/rant

[u/[deleted]]

Thanks - this is great. Right now, I like recorded lectures/seminars, audiobooks, and podcasts so I can listen to them while getting other stuff done... yard work or chasing my little one around. Ultimate multitasking! Really appreciate it.